Financial service providers have traditionally provided a variety of techniques for obtaining financial information and for trading financial instruments. One common technique involves having a representative of the financial institution meet directly with a customer. The representative can counsel the client in financial matters, can provide financial information to the user, e.g., stock quotes, and can execute financial transactions for the user. However, it is generally neither efficient nor necessary to have a representative directly involved in providing all financial services to a client. The cost of providing some services to a user, e.g., providing information regarding recent transactions or providing stock quotes, is time consuming and expensive when performed by a financial service representative. The cost of employing enough representatives to properly service clients is expensive. In addition, representatives are more likely to make errors than an automated process when performing certain services. For example, when providing financial information to a client or when conducting a financial transaction for a client.
In order to reduce the cost of providing financial services some financial service providers enable users to access financial information via a telephone. The user calls a financial service provider and listens to a message that describes various options, the user selects the appropriate option by depressing a data tone multiple frequency (DTMF) button on a conventional telephone touch pad. The user is then walked through various menus until the user is able to provide enough information such that the financial service provider can provide the service requested by the client. While this technique is more efficient than the having a representative meet directly with a customer, it still has several significant disadvantages. One disadvantage is that the user must provide information to the financial service provider using only a telephone touch pad. This technique is tedious and inefficient when the user attempts to input information that is not in the form of a numbered list. For example, if a user wants to obtain a quote on a stock, it is difficult for a user to input the name of stock using only a telephone touch pad since most numbers on a telephone touch pad correspond to three letters. The problem of receiving inputs from a user increases as the amount of information the client must provide to the financial service provider increases. Accordingly, the touch pad technique is not efficient for many type of complex financial transactions, e.g., option trading, where the user must input a significant amount of information.
Accordingly, what is needed is a system and method that: (1) automatically provides financial information to a client without requiring a service representative; (2) increases the efficiency of a financial service transaction when compared to conventional systems; (3) increases the accuracy of a financial service transaction when compared to conventional systems; (4) enables a client to easily and efficiently provide information to the financial service provider; (5) enables a financial service provider to easily and efficiently perform various financial services for a client automatically, including complex financial transactions.